By Dr Tony Monda

WHEN the British art critic Michael Shepherd from London wrote in The Sunday Telegraph: “To think that from 10 top sculptors in the world, three most likely come from a single tribe — the Shona,” he had not realised the impact of his observations.
I make the assertion that Zimbabwean sculpture is predominantly and genealogically Shona.
Shona sculpture is not a myth or the white man’s invention by default – i.e.: that Frank McEwen discovered, created and/or fostered it!
The flawed story of our visual cultural history continues to haunt us today.
Books written by Western writers do not acknowledge our story, our culture, our history and our hereditary skills, due to the fact that the colonisers tried to obliterate ‘Shonaness’ from our ideology.
Shona sculpture is a language, a train of thought and conceptualisation of African ideas, our environment, our fables, our beliefs and our lives immortalised in stone.
Language is the basis of our cultural transmission; be it orally, visually or spiritually and these days, include digitally.
The language, identity and culture of a people are derived from a value system which comes from a shared past and culture.
Shona art draws on a wide range of orature, traditional sources and ideology to articulate our indigenous culture in stone.
Thus it was inevitable that the collective umbrella of Shona art produced a specific consciousness which not only reflected the oral and written language, but posture, body language, mannerisms and ontology of the people.
The stone birds found at Great Zimbabwe, the jewel of Zimbabwe’s spiritual wisdom should unequivocally inform us that the genesis of stone sculpture is decidedly Shona.
What is Shona is Shona – zvivezwa zvedu ndezvedu!
Nga – our stone art belongs to us the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
Is the ultimate objective to disfranchise Shona sculpture from its ethnic origins in order to appeal to the Western world at large?
Is it a strategy to impose cultural domination of a language they cannot understand?
In seeking a so-called consentual definition of ‘Shona’ sculpture, many have opted for the definition ‘Zimbabwean stone sculpture’ to include the many diasporic artists from Malawi, Mozambique, Angola and Zambia who immigrated into Zimbabwe seeking employment, many working on the tobacco farms of Guruve; whose traditional artistic medium was wood.
Our Shona encounters with stone harks back to the crucible of our culture – that of MaDzimbahwe –meaning ‘people of the stones’.
Turner and Constable are British landscape artists; Picasso, Miro and Dali are decidedly ‘Catalan’ Spanish artists; Rembrandt, etc are Dutch and Caravaggio is Italian, and no one dare to say otherwise.
But when a Zimbabwean says “my work is of Shona origin,” Western Euro-American scholars, and sadly, even some African art authorities tell them it is not.
I ask therefore, how Shona is Shona art?
I have often met the wrath of Western academics, collectors, curators and our Western-trained African ‘arts authorities’ who readily sing to their master’s tune (for their supper), audaciously asserting that our stone sculpture is not Shona.
Often I am criticised for the pro-indigenous academic stance I take when articulating the discourse of modern Shona sculpture.
The unbridled fictitious connotations propagated by Western scholars that our modern sculpture does not belong to us and must be erased and obliterated from our academic discourse.
For the record, I write on good authority, confident in its history, because my father’s uncle, my Sekuru Joram Mariga a Korekore from Zvimba, founded this modern movement of his own volition before he was alleged ‘discovered’ and encouraged by Frank McEwen.
Through this article, I intend to chisel away the baggage of colonial cultural rhetoric that Western scholars, have loaded onto the backs of our sculpture, and attempted from its very foundation to deny its ‘Shona’ roots.
No doubt there will be brothers of African descent who will try to challenge my assertion of our cultural heritage.
Indeed, some will play into the whiteman’s hands and proclaim ‘Shona art is dead’.
Others will say it is a thing of the past; Monda must stop living in the past.
Africans tend to justify black excellence in relation to the whiteman’s approval or stamp of authority.
What we must realise is that over the years the accretion of flawed definitions of ‘Shona art’ has attributed to its loss as a cohesive ethos and identity.
Intrusive white influences have dislodged our sense of self and ownership with these erroneous definitions of our cultural heritage and stone art.
The challenge for African artists and scholars today is to place our own African definitions of ourselves and correct or reject outright the imposed or borrowed notions of our identity, who and what we are and what we ultimately produce.
When a handful of immigrants from neighbouring countries are welcomed into our cultural midst and learn the art of stone masonry from us, it does not imply that we should lose or abdicate our Shona roots.
Statistically, most of its practitioners and purveyors are Shona people.
The differing definitions of Zimbabwe’s Shona sculpture have remained a delusion for Western Euro-American scholars; but we African scholars are to blame also, because for a few silver coins we have allowed it to be ‘colonised’ and defined by Western pseudo-scholars to our own detriment and disempowerment.
Definitions can empower and disempower.
Ignorant, uneducated white settlers and foreign diplomatic functionaries have erroneously asserted definitions of our identity and knowledge of self, and have used words as a weapon to undermine our identity, traditional knowledge and ancestral achievements.
The DNA of Zimbabwe’s legendary sculpture lies unequivocally in its ‘Shonaness’.
This cannot be removed from the content and context of the work, despite its stylistic affiliations with Western modernity.
The spiritual stance of Zimbabwean Shona sculpture is decidedly Shona, and it is important to resist the abhorrent and often nefarious ways of disfranchising our Shona heritage.
The critical role of indigenous religion and spirituality was completely sculpted out and dusted off Shona stone art before it had acquired enough impetus to make a greater world impact.
Unless and until indigenous Zimbabweans become patrons of our own art and literature, we shall continue to ask the question – Who is our art for and for whom do we write our books?
We need to demystify the myths of Zimbabwean stone sculpture and give it its true identity and definition.
Time is up for us to stop imbibing from the whiteman’s goblet and pick up instead our African calabash to allow our forefather’s ideas to pour henceforth and nourish our visual cultural memory.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, musician, art critic, practicing artist and Corporate Image Consultant. He is also a specialist Art Consultant, Post-Colonial Scholar, Zimbabwean Socio-Economic analyst and researcher.
E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com